Friday, May 18, 2007

Achtung, Baby

When I was 11 years old, I stole a horse.

Borrowed might be a more accurate description - it was always my intention to return the horse - but still. I took a horse that did not belong to me. It was summer, I was visiting a friend in the country, and we were bored. We were out for a stroll on a country road when we spotted some horses in a field and decided that it would be a really great adventure to just get on those horses and go galloping across those fields.

So we did.

The only problem was, I was hardly an experienced rider, and galloping bareback on an unfamiliar horse with only a dusty mane to hang on to is not an easy thing to do. I lasted about five minutes into the ride before I was tossed, up and over the horse's head and into the grass, as the horse leapt over a fence. I was battered and bruised and scraped and more than a little dizzy. But I'll never forget the exhilaration. I had flown. I had seized that great animal and - filled with gleeful terror - hoisted myself on top and flown away toward the horizon, soaring for forever and forever and forever on the wind and it had been magnificent. I lay in the grass for what seemed an eternity, while my friend sobbed over my scratched-up body, and breathed in the smell of grass and horse and dirt and tears and felt the breeze ruffle my hair and sting my scraped-up cheeks and felt alive.

I've never forgotten that feeling. I've ridden many times since (never again, however, bareback and never again in short terry-cloth shorts), and had a great many adventures, but I've never again captured that exact feeling, that feeling of tossing yourself like a leaf into the wind to be flung and spun about, knowing that however hard you land it will feel like a flutter. That feeling of being so incredibly small and vulnerable and at the same time indestructible. That feeling of exhilaration that only comes with doing something really, really breathtakingly, heart-stoppingly, brilliantly scary.That feeling that you can only really, truly appreciate, I think, when you're a child - when you experience your smallness as power, when you feel both diminutive and indestructible, when you thrill at fear. I can see the glimmer of this feeling in WonderBaby, in the spark in her eyes as she spins madly atop some jungle gym, barreling toward the slide, batting her mother's worrying, grasping hands away, as she races toward the fences, the rocks, the dining room furniture, straining to go higher-faster-further.

That spark in her eye thrills me, and terrifies me. It thrills me because I remember that spark in my own eye, and the circuits of electricity coursing through my veins to light that spark. I remember the thrill of balancing precariously in the highest limbs of a cherry tree, my lips and fingers stained pink from the purloined fruit, gazing down at the grass below and wondering what it would be like to just let go and fall. Or tiptoeing around the bushes that surrounded the decrepit old house of the ancient woman who lived near the pond, hoping to catch a glimpse of her in the middle of some terrible spell-casting ritual, hoping to hear her cackle and shriek, hoping to run away, terrified, giggling and screaming, back to the safety of our tree-forts and hideaways. Or racing down the steepest hill on our bicycles, daring each other to let go of the handlebars and the pedals and let our limbs fly as we careen faster and faster and faster. Or stealing a horse, and falling off, and loving it.

But it terrifies me, too, because I remember. I remember how intoxicating those feelings, that buzz that no narcotic, no liquor can ever replicate, that sweet, exhilarating intoxication that makes you dizzy with excitement and insensible to danger, that makes you do things like drop from trees or stalk little old ladies or steal horses. I see that spark in WonderBaby's eyes as she strains to climb higher and higher and higher up whatever mountain of wood or metal or sand or furniture stands before her, and I think, she will just keep going. She'll want higher and higher and faster and faster and she will not stop climbing and racing and speeding into the sweet exhilaration of fear.

And it scares me because I - having left Neverland long ago - am now mortal and fleshy and bound by time and space and body and I feel fear as a threat, as a warning, as a reminder that I am no longer nor was I ever a leaf on the wind, fluttering, landing with a whisper. I know that the wind is not gentle, and I know that I break, and I know that she breaks. I know that beneath her wings there is flesh and bone and blood; I know that no matter how immortal she seems or feels, no matter how removed from the exigencies of time and space is her experience of life, no matter how freely she flies... I know that she is as bound to earth and body as am I.

But I also know this: that being bound and feeling bound are two very, very different things, and that once upon a time, a long time ago, I felt unbound. I flew. And the memories of this flight are among the sweetest that I carry.

So. I want for her to fly, as much as she can, while she still believes that she has wings. I want her to be dangerous, to tilt into the wind, to aim at the sun. I want her childhood to filled with speed and light and the delicious tang of fear. I want her to build castles and forts and hunt monsters and spy on witches and race dragons and eat cherries in the very topmost limbs of the trees.

50 Comments:

this post makes me think of two songs. the first is something she might say:

"oh how the little things strengthen my tiny wings, help me to take on the world. when you love me there's nothing i wouldn't try - i might even fly..."

and the second more something you might say in return:

"when you're soaring through the air, i'll be your solid ground. take every chance you dare - i'll still be there when you come back down. angel, you were born to fly, and if you get too high i'll catch you when you fall. i know the sky is calling; angel, let me help you with your wings."

i love you.i did the same thing- except for there was no field.. it was just a huge stable yard- and i went INTO SOMEONE'S YARD AND TOOK THEIR HORSE AND HOPPED ON IT AND RODE IT AROUND! who the hell does that?!?! someone so in love with horses who never got to ride them as often as she wanted- and who just wanted to ride that horse. i suck. lol

I'm with Mad. I am relieved that neither of my two appears to be a risk-taker.

I remember babysitting one night in NYC with my best friend. And when the parents had come home, and we'd been paid, we took the elevator up to the top floor of the 16-story apartment building and walked up to the roof. We then treated the wall at the edges of the roof as the bottom uneven bar (we were both gymnasts), and jumped up, leaning our torsos off of the roof. Exhilarating? Yes? Breathtakingly stupid? Also that.

love this post. brought back good feelings and memories from childhood. You are right though - now that we're older and we're the parents, it's harder to identify with the freedom and easier to say "be careful!" I want my boys to experience their childhoods the way I did - with joy and laughter and the freedom that comes only from being a child. And while I will always scream "be careful" I still take joy in the boys being just that: the boys.

I never stole a horse, but I did used to climb trees, once falling from the top of a big willow tree. The story got better and better as the years went on, since I could point to the tree (now much taller than it was when the event happened).

I absolutely love this post. It's so beautiful. There is so much joy to be had in letting lose and just loving the world around you. Your daughter will have so many happy memories. She'll remember these feelings of joy and freedom and adventure and they will shape who she is, just as yours have shaped who you are. LOVE THIS!!!

it is just beginning for us. and now that you have framed it so beautifully, reminded me of what it was once to be small and magic and powerfully fearless, i too will be able to remember as i watch O, heart in my mouth, hoping he will not break.

I love this post. I've been thinking the same thing lately. I try with every fiber in my body to not be a protective parent. I want my child to leap for the skies. I think it's important for her that she fall and experience the exhilirating feeling of finding one's limits. What's happened to all of us that we're so protective of our kids?

A flood of memories filled my mommy head....crawling through drainage pipes, leaping off of cliffs and free falling into water, sneaking into back yards to jump on their trampolines, falling through ice in the tentatively frozen creek and walking home wet and freezing...

So many dangers, so much fun. So much scarier when I think of my littles...and yet...

I love this. I can't really relate because, as I sometimes regret, I was always cautious by nature, but it resonates in the memories and occasional current reality of wistfully watching other poeple doing those things and wishing I had it in me. Lovely.

I fractured my arm and split open my chin once going down a hill on a bike just like you described. My sister ran to the bottom and scooped me up, I remember asking her if I was dying. It felt like maybe I was. It was a very big hill, a paved main road out in the country...meant for cars and not children on bicycles.

Neither of mine manifest the danger gene yet...but this weekend on vacation, I was faced with my own reflection in BubTar's clinging and whining at being displaced from his home. He laid in my lap at the restaurant, begging to just go back to the hotel, and I saw myself there in my lap and felt like my own mother for just a moment.

flying is fun.so is dreaming of flying.which is all i manage these days.but while one foot is firmly planted on terra firma the other is inches off the ground and all my stories of magic and fairies and ...fall on very intent and curious little ears.LAVENDULA

An amazing tribute to your daughter and memory of your childhood. How close these both seem, don't they? How quickly time has passed and we can relive it all through our children. Yes, shouldn't we all "tilt into the wind, aim at the sun"? Isn't that our birthrite on this incredible Mother Earth? Tomorrow, I will do just that. You reminded me...to always remember.Thank you,XOXO

Brilliant. My wife just pointed me to your blog, we are hoping to raise Tarzan (our 1 year old) with the same sense of wonderment and a can-do attitude.

In addition to the dangerous book, you might investigate "the boy mechanic" reprints. Most of it is fierce politically incorrect, and dangerous, but even just reading it inspires you to DO things with your child.